


The Last Hit

by ion_bond



Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Anger, Beast Hank, Betrayal, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Charles Xavier's Lost Years, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-03
Updated: 2014-06-03
Packaged: 2018-02-03 07:26:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1736168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ion_bond/pseuds/ion_bond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hank tries to figure out his anger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Hit

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for DoFP.

Hank feels the needles bite into his thigh and hopes that they will save his life. 

The robot above him clicks, whirrs, considers unfathomably. He doesn't know how its targeting system works or what Erik did to it, what now factors into the calculations it makes, but he remembers holding Erik under the water in Paris and pummeling him. Pressing the other man down, claws digging into his shoulders as Erik struggled and sputtered. 

The bullet had leapt after Raven out the window like a hornet, like a living thing. How angry he was. When the shot hit Charles on the beach, they all knew it was an accident. This was no accident. 

The rage he'd felt – it's something Hank has told himself many times over the years is not really a part of him. Or if it is, it does not define him. It's not all that he is. Charles, back when he was more together, used to be reassuring on this front too. One night Hank, frustrated, had tossed into the depths of Cerebro a pair of pliers, a tool he was now too clumsy to use. The professor had taken Hank's hand – his paw – between his own, then. _This too, is a tool. A specialized tool, magnificently designed – not for this task, but for others. Any idiot can wire a circuit. No one else can do what you can do with these._ He felt the rough pads with a fingertip, the fur between the digits, gingerly touched even the razor-sharp claws. _And you decide what to do with them, my friend. You still have the use of your brain._ He was already drinking that year, of course, washing his pills down with whiskey, but that was before the serum. Charles doesn't seem to think Hank needs assuaging anymore, or maybe he just believes himself incapable of providing it. 

Hank remembers the feel of metal against his fur as the fountain decorations wrapped themselves around his arms, holding him up and forcing him still for the cameras. This was exactly what he'd feared, hiding out in the shadows with Charles, taking their medicine. Hank had known for years how his own fangs looked in his blue face when he snarled, but no one else had known, not until Erik held him there, pinned him like a specimen as the world looked on in horror. The feeling in his stomach when Charles Xavier told his boss at the CIA that he was a mutant? That was nothing. This was it. His own personal nightmare.

What people believed about them – he'd been made the evidence that proved it all true. He saw their flashbulbs popping, heard the screams and yells of the crowd. Thank god he couldn't understand French.

And even then, deep inside him, more evidence. His own fury beneath the fear. He was nothing but a cornered animal.

That beating in the fountain – Hank recognizes it for what it was. He had been trying to drown Erik Lehnsherr. Trying to kill him. Charles wouldn't have thought him capable, but then, Charles didn't really want to know. He only ever looked as deep as he wanted to look. But Erik, unsentimental, understood what Hank was doing and reacted appropriately. 

Now, inside the crushed car, inside the imprisoning ring of the stadium with the Sentinal bearing down on him, Hank watches the blue dissolve from his knuckles. A recognizable human hand emerges, dexterous and fragile, and for the first time, he feels a sense of loss. Here he is, hiding again, hoping to be overlooked. 

And it's still there. Despite the quadruple dose in his bloodstream, somewhere beneath the fear for his life, he recognizes it: his anger. A person can be angry too. After all, he has been betrayed and betrayed, and betrayed again.

Charles in his chair on the tongue of Cerebro, pointing a flashlight while Hank dangles from the scaffolding by his useful freakish feet to reach for those pliers. Raven dragged across the plaza by the metal in her leg, the strongest person he knows – loves, hates – her mouth open in helpless protest. The Sentinal that Logan says will kill him someday, maybe as soon as right now. 

The machine towering above him turns, having somehow determined that Hank is not a threat. He breathes in deep. Relief? 

He doesn't know, but right then and there, he decides. When the serum wears off, he will be himself.

They won't do this to him again.


End file.
